I still use Windows 7, but I’m going to have to upgrade eventually, regardless of the terrible Modern UI-induced stress I get (what the crap is Xbox Music?). We’ll all have to upgrade eventually, because we’re going to want DirectX 12 features, right? So it’s great news for us that Microsoft will be offering free Windows 10 upgrades for a year.
To clarify, Microsoft’s poorly-worded announcement made it sound to some like the free upgrade would eventually involve a subscription plan. What Microsoft meant was not “free upgrade for the first year,” but “upgrade for free within the first year.” It’s not a subscription: it’s a free, one-time upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, which includes free future updates, the way Windows has always worked.
My hope is that mass adoption of Windows 10 will defragment the PC gaming audience—we'll never all be on the same hardware (and wouldn't want it that way), but at least non-Linux PC gamers can be on the same version of Windows and DirectX. Back when Windows Vista launched, everyone who chose not to upgrade missed out on DirectX 10. Vista didn't have a lot of fans, because it was absolute garbage. If Windows 10 suffers the same fate, DirectX 12 (and I’m 99% sure the full features of DX12 won't be available on Windows 7) will go underutilized. But why would that happen if Windows 10 is free?
I reached out to a few developers to chat about the news, and Gaslamp Games CTO and lead programmer Nicholas Vining isn't as optimistic. Vining points out that only around 50% of Windows 7/8 users have DirectX 12-capable hardware (actually, it’s some number greater than 50%, according to Microsoft, but apparently not high enough to note the difference). And even if they do have capable hardware, he says, that doesn’t mean their hardware will perform well, and there’s no guarantee they’ll all upgrade to Windows 10 even if it’s free. Lots of people, myself included, are perfectly happy with Windows 7.
“Developers, especially smaller ones like us, cannot afford to reduce our userbase down to whatever percent of the DirectX 12 hardware owning userbase decides to migrate to Windows 10,” wrote Vining by email. “It wouldn't be 50% of our user base; it might be somewhere between 8% and 10%, but we skew demographically older.”
Vining says that, for a small developer, the majority of the customers expect perfect performance out of the box “because Minecraft works on their machine, and it's 3D, so ‘why doesn't your game?’" He also points out that “if somebody gives you something free in the exciting world of computing and technology, that typically means you're the product.”